What periods of history can you point to where libertarian ideals led to happiness and prosperity for the masses? Cause I can point to at least 2 where it led to wide unemployment and misery.

I would argue that the human race as a whole has never actually had a period of overall happiness and prosperity. Be it under a monarchy, a collective, a communism, a democrat government, a republican government...

I would also argue that we have never seen a point of actual "libertarian" ideals; as we have never seen a period of actual "communist" ideals. The 20's and 30's were free market, but not a pure "libertarian" environment. It would be like arguing that communism as a philosophy is bad because of the injustices perpetrated by Lenin and all his successors. By doing that, I could point to at least 100 cases in which "communism" has led to widespread misery, death, and torture. But I won't, because I understand that the USSR was a socialist society only in name._________________The Thirties dreamed white marble and slipstream chrome, immortal crystal and burnished bronze, but the rockets on the covers of the Gernsback pulps had fallen on London in the dead of night, screaming. - William Gibson, The Gernsback Continuum

I'll be coming back to this...I just don't have the drive to type up a big long post full of references showing why what mindslicer posted was half true in some cases, a deliberate distortion of the facts (The U.K. is pursuing austerity measures right now douchenozzle, of course their national health service is undergoing rationing and poorer service) in others, and generally just more of the same libertarian pipe dream you can get by listening to ron paul rant about the gold standard._________________

I suspect you believe the issues the USPS are undergoing are because it's a poorly run government bureaucracy with greedy unions who are fleecing the poor tax payers with their crazy generous retirement plans._________________

The budget you linked, on the page you cited shows an immediate drop of total managed expenditure for the only year that really matters, next year.

Projections beyond that are basically just speculation given a lack of complete prescience in the human race.

However, they also show...right there on the bottom of that page a shrinking amount of total expenditure as a % of GDP Now you can point to the fact that more money is going out, but that has a whole slew of other factors, increasing population, aging population, optimistic estimates on how much cash they'll be taking in.

Your own goddamn Link wrote:

The NHS is already having to make savings because it is accustomed to its budget rising by more than inflation to deal with an ageing and growing population. It may also have to find up to £5billion a year to pay for the Dilnot reforms, which propose a cap on how much people must pay towards their elderly care,

However, Mr Hunt suggested he would resist any attempt to pay for these reforms out of the NHS spending pot, saying it would be "extremely difficult" given the cost savings the Coalition had to make.

Mr Hunt also hinted that the Dilnot reforms may be too costly at a time of austerity. "There are other versions that might not be quite so expensive," he said.

How the fuck does any of this dispute the point I made that if you institute austerity into a national health system of course the service is going to suffer.

Edit: Beyond that when you"ring fence" a social program like that, which is continually going to have people moving into the system, the end result may as well be a budget cut. Less money to pay for more people._________________

Joined: 04 Sep 2006Posts: 2545Location: North of the People's Republic of Massachusetts

Posted: Sun Oct 28, 2012 10:26 am Post subject:

Monkey Mcdermott wrote:

The budget you linked, on the page you cited shows an immediate drop of total managed expenditure for the only year that really matters, next year.

It also explained why: A one-time grant of assets to the public sector.

Of course in retrospect that's irrelevant, since the NHS service cuts I initially cited and that you hand-waved away as resulting from 'austerity measures' were mentioned in an article dated July 28th, 2011. Were 'austerity measures' going on then too? If so, I'd love to see some numbers supporting that.

You really don't want to start that particular comparison. I have a lifetime of personal experience being denied things I've needed by insurance companies. I once had an insurance company tell me I took too much insulin and refuse to pay for a prescription. I had an insurance company deny me an MRI my neurologist ordered because some actuarial chart somewhere said I didn't need it. I can only imagine the things I could turn up on google. Like the lady who was dropped from her coverage because she was diagnosed with MS and had a dizzy spell years earlier that the insurance company claimed constituted a pre-existing condition._________________"Worse comes to worst, my people come first, but my tribe lives on every country on earth. Iíll do anything to protect them from hurt, the human race is what I serve." - Baba Brinkman

Joined: 04 Sep 2006Posts: 2545Location: North of the People's Republic of Massachusetts

Posted: Mon Oct 29, 2012 11:18 am Post subject:

Dogen wrote:

You really don't want to start that particular comparison. I have a lifetime of personal experience being denied things I've needed by insurance companies. I once had an insurance company tell me I took too much insulin and refuse to pay for a prescription. I had an insurance company deny me an MRI my neurologist ordered because some actuarial chart somewhere said I didn't need it. I can only imagine the things I could turn up on google. Like the lady who was dropped from her coverage because she was diagnosed with MS and had a dizzy spell years earlier that the insurance company claimed constituted a pre-existing condition.

On the contrary; I am sure both systems are rife with horror stories. Because of that, I have a hard time considering the NHS or similar systems to be an ideal health insurance system as Monkey intimated when he posted his response to Kenshiro's 'what system would you propose?' question.

I think using the term "ideal" is overstating his position. Having lived in Canada and the US, I know I personally favor the Canadian system because it was dramatically (like 3 times) less expensive to me, and I got essentially the same care for the services I required when I lived there. Plus, life expectancies are higher in both Canada and the UK (interesting side note: if you compare only white Americans our life expectancy is about the same). So I would have to wonder whether specific instances of catastrophic tragedy were the salient determiner of quality._________________"Worse comes to worst, my people come first, but my tribe lives on every country on earth. Iíll do anything to protect them from hurt, the human race is what I serve." - Baba Brinkman

You really don't want to start that particular comparison. I have a lifetime of personal experience being denied things I've needed by insurance companies. I once had an insurance company tell me I took too much insulin and refuse to pay for a prescription. I had an insurance company deny me an MRI my neurologist ordered because some actuarial chart somewhere said I didn't need it. I can only imagine the things I could turn up on google. Like the lady who was dropped from her coverage because she was diagnosed with MS and had a dizzy spell years earlier that the insurance company claimed constituted a pre-existing condition.

Also, the drug is currently in the approval process. The company might look really good by providing it for free for a limited time, but you can see that it also promotes their chances of getting it approved since I doubt the NHS wants to give and then deny medicine to people._________________